As coronavirus (COVID-19) rapidly spreads throughout the United States, it is causing a shortage of hospital beds impacting the delivery of healthcare services in places like New York. This has highlighted the critical need to ensure plenty of capacity for COVID-19 intensive care patients. With a shortage of beds, a portable, rapid-response bed was needed to shore up shortages in health care facilities during a crisis like COVID-19.

Indiana-based CIT Inc. was contacted by Direct Supply to manufacture a portable, versatile hospital bed designed to accommodate an overflow of patients while offering the support of a traditional hospital bed. CIT designed the first prototype and rolling out the first of thousands of beds this week. The to-market process has taken two weeks to complete. The design and engineering team collaborated and worked around the clock to complete this process in record time.

“Normally this process takes eight to 12 weeks. We’ve done it in two weeks,” said Wuertemberger, founder of CIT.“To go from concept to manufacturing beds is pretty amazing.”

“I’m happy to keep our employees working to support medical services, so that emergency ‘healthcare heroes’ can have more beds for patients,” he said.

CIT is focused on design, prototyping, and manufacturing solutions for companies in aerospace, automotive, cab and canopy, material handling and medical industries. Learn more at c-i-t.com.

Direct Supply is an employee-owned company committed to Bringing What’s Next to Senior Health™ via world-class procurement, building management, care technology, and design and development solutions. Learn more atDirectSupply.com.